Pre-emption with or without Pre-task Planning: A Probe into L2 Lexical Diversity

The current study, setting a two-fold goal, attempted to see whether the preemptive focus on form (FonF) under either planned or unplanned conditions could contribute to increasing lexical diversity in written narratives and, second, to find whether there was a trade-off between the lexical diversity and accuracy. To this end, 32 beginner learners were selected following a Quick Oxford Placement Test and assigned into two groups to receive preemptive FonF under no-planning and pre-task planning conditions. The analysis of the results through a set ofrepeated measure ANOVAs and independent-samples t-tests revealed that the first group with unplanned condition outperformed the one with pre-task planning in lexical diversity. The results also revealed the trade-off between the lexical diversity and accuracy. That is, both lexical diversity and accuracy were significantly taken care of under unplanned preemptive condition whereas pre-task planning hindered attendingto lexical diversity and, thus, both aspects simultaneously. It was concluded that providing learners with appropriate conditions through form-focused instruction can set the ground for activating their linguistic knowledge and letting them attend to different linguistic aspects during writing

The Effect of Service Quality Dimensions on Customer Satisfaction: A Case Study of Saderat Bank of Iran

Caring customer opinions and paying attention to its beliefs not only leads to organization attachment, but also causes the customer feels a component of the organization; therefore, such satisfaction may also be the key to bank achievement.  Thus, the objective of the present research is to study the relationship between quality of service dimensions and customer satisfaction in different branches of Saderat Bank in Shiraz. This is an applied research in term of objective and is a survey in term of data collection. Data were collected through using questionnaire. Moreover, variables’ reliability was examined using Cronbach alpha coefficient. Data analysis and research hypothesis testing were conducted using SPSS software and t-student and binominal tests. Research findings indicate that all quality of service dimensions (quality of Service, customer accessibility, service characteristic/feature, and considering customer complaints) influence customer satisfaction in Saderat Bank branches

Evaluating the Effect of Cardiac Rehabilitation Care Plan on Quality of Life of Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

Introduction: Cardiovascular surgeries are among the conventional surgeries aimed at increasing the survival rate and improving the quality of life of patients. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of cardiac rehabilitation on quality of life of patients undergoing Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.Methods: This was a semi-experimental study performed on 160 patients undergoing CABG surgery. The rehabilitation program was carried out for 13 weeks (three sessions per week) in 40 sessions, six weeks after the CABG surgery. The MacNew standard questionnaire and the general health questionnaire (S-f 36) were completed before the beginning of rehabilitation sessions as well as after completion of these sessions by patients.Results: According to the results, the quality of life of patients significantly increased in the physical and emotional areas after the rehabilitation program. The results also indicated that there was a significant difference between various levels of research in the physical functioning variables, dysfunction due to physical health, dysfunction due to emotional health, energy/fatigue of individuals, emotional well-being, social functioning, pain, and general health.Conclusions: The present results indicated the improved quality of life of patients in all the areas after cardiac rehabilitation intervention, compared to before that. Therefore, paying more attention to cardiac rehabilitation is necessary due to its positive effects on increasing the quality of life of patients

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Persuasive Strategies towards Racial Appeal in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Racism is the main theme in Toni Morisson’s The Bluest Eye. The little black girl’s long lasting yearn for blue eyes has been linked to the standards of America’s society in 1940’s which associated beauty to being white. Although instances of racism are rampant throughout the story, previous studies have not attempted to determine the type of persuasive strategies used by Toni Morrison to justify racism in the novel. In this paper, the author made use of Aristotle’s concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos, as 3 main dimensions of persuasion to determine the strategies used in the novel by the narrator-Claudia. Descriptive qualitative analysis of the novel’s text revealed that the author has made use of all these strategies. Pathos was observed in form of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. Logos was observed in the logic of the grown up society of America about being white and ethos was found among the black who themselves credited the whites over their own race

Persuasive Strategies towards Racial Appeal in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Racism is the main theme in Toni Morisson’s The Bluest Eye. The little black girl’s long lasting yearn for blue eyes has been linked to the standards of America’s society in 1940’s which associated beauty to being white. Although instances of racism are rampant throughout the story, previous studies have not attempted to determine the type of persuasive strategies used by Toni Morrison to justify racism in the novel. In this paper, the author made use of Aristotle’s concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos, as 3 main dimensions of persuasion to determine the strategies used in the novel by the narrator-Claudia. Descriptive qualitative analysis of the novel’s text revealed that the author has made use of all these strategies. Pathos was observed in form of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. Logos was observed in the logic of the grown up society of America about being white and ethos was found among the black who themselves credited the whites over their own race

The Effect of Impulsivity vs. Reflectivity on Reading Comprehension of Iranian EFL Learners

In recent years attention has been accorded to language learners’ affective factors and learning styles. Two of the significant learning styles are impulsivity and reflectivity which have not been studied as much as other styles such as introversion and extroversion. This study endeavored to find out whether or not impulsivity and reflectivity have any effect on reading comprehension of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Seventy two language learners were selected from 4 intact classes out of 112 learners. Nelson proficiency test was given to the participants as homogeneity test. Next, Barrat’s (1995) impulsiveness questionnaire was given to the participants. Based on the results of the questionnaire, the participants formed 3 different groups, i.e., a reflective group (n=25), impulsive group (n=25) and a control group (n=22). The control group consisted of less impulsive and less reflective learners based on Barrat’s scale. An IELTS reading test (general module) was administered to the participants. Based on the results of independent samples t-test, it was found that impulsivity and reflectivity do not have any effect on reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Mobile-Assisted Vocabulary Learning: A Review Study

Mobile phones are becoming more acceptable toolkits to learn languages. One aspect of English language which has been subject to investigation in mobile assisted language learning (MALL) is vocabulary. This study reviewed some of the studies conducted in various contexts on the effect of MALL on vocabulary learning. We investigated some of the most prominent databases such as Science Direct, Wiley, Scopus and Oxford to find these studies; believing that this study can have pedagogical implications for future researchers and language teachers. We selected studies done in different countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, China, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. Thirty studies were selected purposively in this way. Some of the main features of these studies are elaborated on in the discussion section. Pedagogical implications are discussed

Mobile-Assisted Vocabulary Learning: A Review Study

Mobile phones are becoming more acceptable toolkits to learn languages. One aspect of English language which has been subject to investigation in mobile assisted language learning (MALL) is vocabulary. This study reviewed some of the studies conducted in various contexts on the effect of MALL on vocabulary learning. We investigated some of the most prominent databases such as Science Direct, Wiley, Scopus and Oxford to find these studies; believing that this study can have pedagogical implications for future researchers and language teachers. We selected studies done in different countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, China, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. Thirty studies were selected purposively in this way. Some of the main features of these studies are elaborated on in the discussion section. Pedagogical implications are discussed